My Grandma Betty loved chocolate. All her life, whenever I'd visit, I'd bring her some. Cheap chocolate when I was young, good chocolate as I got older. Grandma always opened the box and shared with me, and together we would giggle with our mouths full of luscious chocolate. Our special shared joke - me, Grandma and chocolate.
Years passed, and when Grandma Betty had grown very old, and was in a nursing home, my mom and I went to visit her one day. We brought along a box of chocolates. And boy, was Grandma happy to get them.
But the nurse wasn't as happy. "Now Betty can't eat those, you know better than that." And the nurse was right - at 92, Grandma Betty was on a restricted diet. Grandma sat silently in her wheelchair, and watched as the elegant box was snatched out of her reach and returned to me.
Grandma Betty died a month later.
At her funeral, her many children and grandchildren remembered her. But all I could think, sitting there, was how the plain pine casket reminded me of a box of chocolates.